"Ryan and ADAM, ADAM and Ryan... All those years of study, and was I ever truly a surgeon before I met them? How we plinked away with our scalpels and toy morality. Yes, we could lop a boil here, and shave down a beak there, but... but could we really change anything? No. But ADAM gives us the means to do it... and Ryan frees us from the phony ethics that held us back. Change your look, change your sex, change your race — it's yours to change, nobody else's."
— Dr. Steinmann, BioShock
"Do I even look like one of the kine?"
Alexei certainly does not. I catalogue its peculiarities: the near-serpentine emaciation, the facial markings, the distended earlobes, the disproportionate fingers, the unnaturally elongated forearms and neck. Even at this range, I cannot determine its mortal gender or race. The countenance that hovers over me, while abstractly beautiful, is a thing of planes and angles: smooth, expressionless, vaguely reptilian. Any human resemblance is at best coincidence or convenience.
"But you made yourself this way—"
"Made myself? That is the point. We vampires — we Tzimisce — no longer dance at the whims of mitosis and mutation. We become whatever we need to be. We alone have that option."
"Yes, but you can't just—"
"Indeed, I made myself, and so will you. And so does every butterfly that seek release from its lumpish pupa purgatory."
Alexei certainly does not. I catalogue its peculiarities: the near-serpentine emaciation, the facial markings, the distended earlobes, the disproportionate fingers, the unnaturally elongated forearms and neck. Even at this range, I cannot determine its mortal gender or race. The countenance that hovers over me, while abstractly beautiful, is a thing of planes and angles: smooth, expressionless, vaguely reptilian. Any human resemblance is at best coincidence or convenience.
"But you made yourself this way—"
"Made myself? That is the point. We vampires — we Tzimisce — no longer dance at the whims of mitosis and mutation. We become whatever we need to be. We alone have that option."
"Yes, but you can't just—"
"Indeed, I made myself, and so will you. And so does every butterfly that seek release from its lumpish pupa purgatory."
— Vampire: The Masquerade — Clanbook: Tzimisce
"Listen, I can remake you. Those lips, that nose, the color of your eyes, the wrinkles and imperfections in your skin — it's all malleable. It's all a canvas for my science, my art. For a nominal fee, a token charge, you can let me sculpt your flesh, shape your bones, paint you with a brush dipped in blood and tissue. Anything you want changed, I can change! It's true — everything except your sex. I can't do that... yet. But I am working on it. It's only a matter of time. Gender is an illusion, a thing of flesh and thought quickly altered through paraplasticism."
